A voltage driven array is a semiconductor device comprised of a plurality of individual addressable elements forming a two-dimensional array of voltage driven elements. For example, one known application of a voltage driven array is a pixel display screen, where each pixel on the display screen is an addressable element in the voltage driven array.
Each of the elements in a voltage driven array generates an output in response to an input driving voltage source. For example, in the case of a pixel display screen, a desired pixel (having a particular row/column address in the array) can be caused to allow light waves of a particular frequency to escape (thereby producing a particular visible color) by applying a particular magnitude of driving voltage to the corresponding element of the array.
The output of a given element in a voltage driven array is dependent upon, among other things, the driving voltage level applied to the element, as well as the mechanical and optical properties of the element. These mechanical and optical properties in turn depend on the thickness (and material properties) of the thin films from which they are constructed. However, conventional semiconductor fabrication processes used to fabricate voltage driven arrays can result in a variation in the thickness and the material properties of the thin films across the device. As a result, applying a particular driving voltage to an element positioned at one location on a voltage driven array may generate an output that is different from the output of an element positioned at another location on the array in response to the same driving voltage level. For example, if a given driving voltage level is applied to one element on a pixel display device, the resulting gray-scale or color output may be different from the output of a different element on the same array, if the thickness of the array varies from the first element to the second element.
The present invention was developed in light of these considerations.